Kirk Siegler
As a correspondent on NPR's national desk, Kirk Siegler covers rural life, culture and politics from his base in Boise, Idaho.
His beat explores the intersection and divisions between rural and urban America, including longer term reporting assignments that have taken him frequently to a struggling timber town in Idaho that lost two sawmills right before the election of President Trump. In 2018, after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, Siegler spent months chronicling the diaspora of residents from Paradise, exploring the continuing questions over how – or whether – the town should rebuild in an era of worsening climate-driven wildfires.
Siegler's award winning reporting on the West's bitter land use controversies has taken listeners to the heart of anti-government standoffs in Oregon and Nevada, including a rare interview with recalcitrant rancher Cliven Bundy. He's also profiled numerous ranching and mining communities from Nebraska to New Mexico that have worked to reinvent themselves in a fast-changing global economy.
Siegler also contributes extensively to the network's breaking news coverage, from floods and hurricanes in Louisiana to deadly school shootings in Connecticut. In 2015, he was awarded an international reporting fellowship from Johns Hopkins University to report on health and development in Nepal. While en route to the country, the worst magnitude earthquake to hit the region in more than 80 years struck. The fellowship was cancelled, but Siegler was one of the first foreign journalists to arrive in Kathmandu and helped lead NPR's coverage of the immediate aftermath of the deadly quake. He also filed in-depth reports focusing on the humanitarian disaster and challenges of bringing relief to some of the Nepal's far-flung rural villages.
Before helping open the network's first ever bureau in Idaho at the studios of Boise State Public Radio in 2019, Siegler was based at the NPR West studios in Culver City, California. Prior to joining NPR in 2012, Siegler spent seven years reporting from Colorado, where he became a familiar voice to NPR listeners reporting on politics, water and the state's ski industry from Denver for NPR Member station KUNC. He got his start in political reporting covering the Montana Legislature for Montana Public Radio.
Apart from a brief stint working as a waiter in Sydney, Australia, Siegler has spent most of his adult life living in the West. He grew up in Missoula, Montana, and received a journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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In Nevada, federal land managers have approved a new lithium mine that could supply 37,000 new electric cars a year. But a new lawsuit and the reelection of Donald Trump pose challenges.
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Oregon is eagerly awaiting approval of a federal disaster declaration following a terrible wildfire season. But ranchers in the state's hardest hit counties say they won't see any of that money.
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As the nation's first ever indigenous cabinet secretary, Deb Haaland has made it her priority to right the US government's historical wrongs in Indian Country, a monumental task that's not been without controversy. -
America's first indigenous Cabinet secretary wins praise for managing a domestic energy boom and work on Native American public safety issues. Would she be part of a Kamala Harris administration?
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In the upcoming Supreme Court term, Utah hopes the conservative justices will continue to overturn long-established legal precedents, including the federal government's control of U.S. public land.
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In a Salt Lake City courtroom Tuesday, environmentalists suing Utah will accuse the state of not doing enough to prevent the Great Salt Lake from drying up.
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The biggest losses to wildfires this year have been on prairies, and not in forests. Nearly half of all land burned in the U.S. has been in cattle country extending from Texas to Oregon.
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More than a million acres of rangeland have burned in Oregon this summer. At times the wildfires barely made headlines, but ranchers say the economic fallout will be huge. -
Nearly half of all land burned by wilfires in the U.S. this summer is in Oregon. These rangeland fires got few headlines, but they came at peak grazing time and are economically devastating.
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Democrats in booming Montana are trying to capitalize on resentment over the ultra-wealthy driving up costs as they try to re-elect Jon Tester to the Senate. But the strategy could backfire.
